Hundreds of credit union members are starting their holiday weekend off without their debit cards after a credit compromise forced the Winthrop Federal Credit Union to deactivate customers' cards. The credit union stayed open Friday until 6 p.m. to give cash to affected customers for the weekend. CARDS FROZEN AS A PRECAUTION Credit union officials say its card processer, Metavante, noticed suspicious activity on three of its MasterCard debit cards and notified the credit union about them. While it was not a security breach, the Winthrop Federal Credit Union decided to freeze a block of cards as a precaution, something that Metavante did not advise them to do. "We really know very little. We are working with the credit processor to identify the possible cards," said bank spokeswoman Cathleen Clark. "We always feel it's better to be safe than sorry." Because of the suspected credit compromise, the credit unions says it felt it was necessary to freeze the cards.

Why employers should actually perform background checks.

A former Texas lottery worker was arrested while training for a new job Tuesday - his fourth with the state - and charged with illegally "possessing" personal information on 140 lottery winners and employees, including their names and Social Security numbers. Joseph Mueggenborg was still working for the Lottery Commission in 2007 when he allegedly took the information, which was discovered last year on a state computer at the Comptroller of Public Accounts where he later was employed. He was fired and the information was turned over to criminal investigators. When arrested Tuesday, however, the computer analyst was training for yet another job, at the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Travis County prosecutor Jason English said it was "concerning" that the man was still working for the state after being fired by the comptroller. Susan Stanford, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, said the department was unaware Mueggenborg had been fired and was under investigation when he was hired as a systems analyst three weeks ago. He was receiving job-related training at the time of his arrest, she said. The department has secured Mueggenborg's computer and begun a forensic study.

A surprise legal maneuver by the defense in the Sarah Palin hacking case could undermine key charges carrying the stiffest potential penalties. A lawyer for the Tennessee college student charged with hacking into the Alaska governor's Yahoo e-mail account last year says his client couldn't have violated Palin's privacy because a judge had already declared her e-mails a matter of public record. "He's not suggesting that e-mail can't be private," says Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department cybercrime prosecutor. "He's saying this particular e-mail was not private or personal because of who she is and because it wasn't intimate communication. " Additionally, photos that 20-year-old David Kernell allegedly obtained of Palin and her family were not private since the Palins are "the subjects of untold numbers of photo-ops," the lawyer argued last week, in one of a slew of motions and memorandums attacking the government's four-count federal indictment against Kernell.

Creative lawyer. The kid is still stupid. To me, It says more that Palin didn't get in trouble for using a public web mail account for State business. The kid who reads her email is on trial? What a country.

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. If you don't even know what it is...

Even IT professionals are confused about what constitutes Web 2.0, according to a survey released Wednesday by web security vendor Websense and research firm Dynamic Markets. According to the survey, of 1,300 information technology managers across 10 countries, 17 percent of respondents correctly identified all the items on the survey that can be considered Web 2.0. IT administrators commonly identified the "obvious" Web 2.0 sites -- such as the social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn, Dave Meizlik, director of product marketing at Websense, told SCMagazineUS.com on Tuesday. They also commonly identified blogs and micro blogs, such as Twitter, as Web 2.0. But, respondents less frequently identified other sites as Web 2.0, including iGoogle and Wikipedia, Meizlik said. Only half of respondents identified video uploading sites, such as YouTube, as part of Web 2.0, the survey found. David Lavenda, vice president of marketing and product strategy at security vendor Worklight, told SCMagazineUS.com on Wednesday that IT administrators know they need to secure the enterprise from Web 2.0 threats, but are not always sure what those threats are. "When you go to organizations where security is really important -- financial and government organizations -- and ask, 'What's your fear of Web 2.0?,' they say, 'I really don't know, but we hear enough stories of people being compromised that we don't want to take a chance.' That's the most common answer." Lavenda said.

An insider at the California Water Service Company in San Jose broke into the company's computer system and transferred $9 million into offshore bank accounts and fled the country. Abdirahman Ismail Abdi, 32, was an auditor for the water company, which delivers drinking water throughout the state and is located in San Jose, Calif. Abdi resigned from his position on April 27. Allegedly, that night he went back to work and made three wire transfers totaling more than $9 million from the company's accounts to an account in Qatar. Abdi was seen by a janitor on the night of the crime, according to the San Jose Mercury News, citing court documents filed Wednesday in the federal court at San Jose. The next morning, the water company discovered what had been done and worked with their bank to have the money returned to their account. The company notified police, who are currently investigating the case, Jose Garcia, public information officer at the San Jose Police Department, told SCMagazineUS.com on Friday.

Internal controls failure.

Twenty-three of the 24 major U.S. government agencies contain weaknesses in their information security programs, potentially placing sensitive data at risk to exposure, according to a government report issued this week. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) studied how the agencies were responding to the regulations described in the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA). The mandate requires government entities to develop and implement an agencywide information security program. Inspectors general conduct annual reviews of agency progress. The GAO review, which took place between last December and this month, concluded that, partly based on inspectors general and federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reports, that 23 of 24 agencies contain lax controls to ensure that only approved users can access system data. Meanwhile, 22 of 24 agencies described information security as a "major management challenge," according to the report.

Ignorance is bliss!

IT professionals are under pressure from upper level executives to open the floodgates to the latest Web-based platforms, relaxing Web security policy, according to a new survey of 1,300 IT managers. The survey, conducted by independent research firm Dynamic Markets Ltd., was commissioned by Web, DLP and email security vendor Websense Inc. Dynamic Markets conducted interviews with IT managers in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, the U.K. and the U.S. Nearly all those surveyed said they allow access to some Web-based services, such as webmail, mashups and wikis. But more employees are turning to online collaboration platforms; some are turning to Google Apps, which are integrated with Google's Gmail platform, and others are turning to popular social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. Some users are bypassing Web security policy to access the services, according to 47% of those surveyed.

Will monetary value increase the value of user's data on social networks?

Facebook and Twitter have helped make social networking a household word. Now they need to make money. Efforts to monetize the popular Internet services are increasingly a priority within the two companies, with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone outlining several initiatives at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York this week. And analysts and investors, in search of the next Google-like hit, are paying close attention to the breakneck speed at which Facebook and Twitter are adding new users. While the popularity of the two social media firms has yet to translate into the kind of revenue-generating machine that Google Inc developed with its search advertising business, some say Facebook and Twitter have become so central to the Internet experience that they are inherently valuable. "Both are new ways of communicating. And when you have a new way of communicating ... you benefit people enough so that there is going to be value there," said Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, noting that he regretted not having invested in either firm. In April, Twitter's website attracted 17 million unique visitors in the United States, up sharply from 9.3 million the month before. Facebook grew to 200 million active users in April, less than a year after hitting 100 million users.

A new report from the Progress & Freedom Foundation says that officials in some states want to pass legislation that would extend the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) from covering children under 13 to covering teens until they're 18. COPPA, which became law in 1998, requires verifiable parental consent before a child under 13 can provide personally identifiable information to a Web site that caters to children. Expanding the law to cover teens till they're 18, according to the report, would "require Web sites to obtain more information about both minors and their parents, which runs counter to the original goal of the Act: protecting the privacy of minors." Ultimately, say the authors, "this would actually make minors less 'safe online.'" In this podcast, the report's co-author, PFF Senior Fellow Adam Thierer, explains the original COPPA law and why, in his opinion, the expanded law could have a chilling effect on the free speech rights of minors. The podcast runs 11:30

Defunct behavioral targeting company NebuAd did not just spur complaints by lawmakers and privacy advocates. This week, NebuAd's defense lawyers filed papers with the federal district court in San Francisco asking to withdraw as counsel in a privacy lawsuit. In a motion dated Monday, attorney Thomas Gilbertsen alleges that NebuAd is behind on its legal bills -- in some cases by more than 45 days. He also argues that because NebuAd is out of business, no officers or employees are available to help with the defense. "Because NebuAd has essentially ceased to exist, it can no longer participate in this case," states the motion. Gilbertsen also asked that the case be delayed pending NebuAd's liquidation and the resolution of creditors' claims. Gilbertsen also says in court papers that counsel and NebuAd have "irreconcilable differences." He did not elaborate in the motion or return messages seeking comment.

The think tank Future of Privacy Forum announced this week that it tapped ad agency WPP to come up with new ways of notifying Web users about online behavioral advertising. Director Jules Polonetsky hopes that advertising creatives will be able to come up with something more intelligible than the lengthy jargon-filled policies that are all too often incomprehensible. Federal Trade Commission Chair Jon Leibowitz, who has urged Web companies to provide clear and succinct notice about ad targeting, is cheering the project. "I'm very heartened with what the Future of Privacy Forum has announced," he tells MediaPost. "Most current online privacy policies are essentially incomprehensible for even the savviest online users."

Raises some realistic questions about the American approach to privacy law & regulation. Unfortunately, the article tends to point at the misapplication of laws more heavily than offering the reader an account of the abuses that led us to where we are now. Businesses & government, including the medical industry, freely shared details - or spied on Americans with impunity for decades. The article reminds us that work needs to continue to balance our approach. A Federal law, that sets a floor for privacy requirements, could help reduce conflicting requirements caused by almost every state writing seperate laws because there was a lack of leadership from Washington. American privacy regulations are implemented sectorally - at the industry or State level for example. This leads to many different, and conflicting laws. Privacy is a difficult subject with complex considerations touching aspects of life that have not been questioned for years. This article provides more con than balance, but it reminds us that extreme positions rarely serve anyone well.

Special interest groups and lawyers claim they are defenders of individual privacy. But all that red tape is causing more harm to consumers than good. In a world of tight budgets and sacrificed programs, one sector has continued to grow with the speed and choking effectiveness of kudzu: regulations around privacy. More than 300 privacy-related laws are on the books, in both Washington, D.C. and state capitals. Privacy-related consulting services provided by law and accounting firms are a $500-million-a-year business and have been growing at double digits.

Social networking sites are often used by government ministers as an example of the profound way attitudes to privacy have changed. They argue that the young generation invade their own privacy to a far greater extent than the government ever would. The implication is that the older people who object to government intrusion are living in the past. The response to this is that people who use social networking sites voluntarily reveal things about themselves and have a degree of control of over how long information and photographs stay in the public domain, while the government collects and stores information without permission and allows the subject no access to the data held. There is no obvious comparison between the two activities. But this doesn't let the social networking sites off the hook. Most internet companies claim a kind of morality free status when it comes to such issues as privacy and copyright, and Web 2.0 sites are no different. A study published this week by Cambridge PhD students shows that nearly half of all social networking sites retain copies of photographs after being "deleted" by users. The study examined 16 popular websites that host user-uploaded photos, including social networking sites, blogging sites and dedicated-photo-sharing sites. Seven of the 16 sites surveyed were still maintaining copies of users' photos after they had been deleted by the user. The researchers - Jonathan Anderson, Andrew Lewis, Joseph Bonneau and lecturer Frank Stajano - found that by keeping a note of the URL where the photo is actually stored in a content delivery network, it was possible for them to access the photo even after it had been deleted.

Four HIV-positive patients whose records were left behind on an MBTA train by a Massachusetts General Hospital employee are suing the hospital, claiming their privacy has been breached. In March the hospital notified 66 patients who received care at its Infectious Disease Associates outpatient practice that billing records bearing their names, Social Security numbers, doctors, and diagnoses had been lost by a manager who was riding the Red Line. She had brought the paperwork home for the weekend, but left it on the train when she returned to work the morning of Monday, March 9, according to hospital security reports. Last week two patients who are HIV-positive filed a suit in Suffolk Superior Court against the hospital and the unidentified billing manager. The unnamed plaintiffs have been joined by two other HIV-positive people. The legal action was first reported in the weekly newspaper Bay Windows. Their lawyer, John Yasi of the Salem law firm Yasi and Yasi, said in an interview he has filed a motion to make the suit a class action that could cover all 66 patients, a significant number of whom are also HIV-positive. "The damages that jump out are the emotional distress surrounding the loss of obviously very sensitive medical information and secondarily the loss of personal security information," he said. "A Social Security number in reality may lead to identity theft, which we all know is a nightmare."

Heartland Payment Systems CEO discusses breach, previews speech Not a week had passed after the announcement of what some have described as the largest data breach ever, when the CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, Robert Carr, began calling for better industry cooperation and new efforts directed at preventing future breaches. Recently, Carr announced that trials will begin late this summer on an end end-to-end encryption system Heartland is developing with technology partners. It is expected to be the first system of its kind in the U.S. The company is also pushing for an end-to-end encryption standard. At the upcoming Practical Privacy Series in Silicon Valley, Carr will discuss the Heartland breach and the role industry, including privacy professionals, must play to prevent future breaches. Here's a preview: IAPP: Many companies have experienced breaches. What made yours different? Ours was different because we are a processor and had passed six years of PCI audits with no problems found. Yet, within days of the most recent audit, the damage had begun. IAPP: Did you have a chief privacy office or a privacy professional on staff before your breach? Do you now? Ironically, when we learned of the Hannaford's breach, we hired a Chief Security Officer who started just three weeks before the breach began. IAPP: In the era of mandatory breach reporting, what is the trajectory of consumer reaction? As a processor it is difficult to really know this. Our customers are merchants who accept card payments. IAPP: Do you think consumers will become numb to breach notices? I believe that many are numb to so many intrusion notices. IAPP: Are breach notices good public policy? Do the notices provide an incentive for companies to change or improve practices? I don't think so. Nobody wants to get breached and the damage caused by a breach is sufficient reason for most of us to do everything we can to prevent them. IAPP: What has Heartland done differentl

Taking a step toward creating more formal standards, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Monday released a set of best practices for social media advertising covering key terms, creative elements, and user privacy, among other topics. The guidelines unveiled at the IAB's Social Media Marketplace conference in New York are intended to encourage the growth of social advertising by giving marketers, agencies and social networks preliminary rules to navigate a category that now spans hundreds of millions of users. "Industry standards are essential to making social media easy, safe and scalable for advertisers," said Seth Goldstein, CEO of Socialmedia.com and co-chair of the IAB's UGC Social Media Committee, in a statement. "The new IAB framework is a critical first step in this direction and we are excited to help enable the next generation of social advertising." While marketers have been eager to experiment with social media, a lack of standard ad formats and metrics and privacy concerns remain obstacles to more rapid advertising growth on social sites. Even so, Forrester Research projects that social media marketing will increase nearly 60% this year to $716 million.

Federal authorities are investigating the loss of a computer hard drive containing a huge quantity of personal information from Bill Clinton's presidency in an apparent security breach at a National Archives record center, government officials said Tuesday. Government officials briefed on the matter said the breach, which was confirmed in April, involved the loss of a drive containing a terabyte of computerized data, which could include millions of individual pieces of information, including personal information about one of then Vice President Al Gore's three daughters. The missing information included Social Security numbers and home addresses of numerous people who visited or worked at the White House, along with other material related to security procedures used by the Secret Service at the White House in the Clinton years. The National Archives and Records Administration said Tuesday in a statement that the agency "takes very seriously the loss of an external hard drive that contained copies of electronic storage tapes from the executive office of the president of the Clinton administration."

A majority of business executives believe that they have a right to know what their employees are doing on social-networking sites, but most workers say it's none of their bosses' business, according to a new survey by Deloitte. The survey was conducted in April with about 2,000 U.S. adults. Of the 500 respondents with managerial job titles (vice president, CIO, partner, board member, etc.), 299, or 60%, agreed that businesses have a right to know how employees portray themselves or their companies on sites like Facebook and MySpace. But 53% of employee respondents said their profiles are none of their employers' business, and 61% said that they wouldn't change what they were doing online even if their boss was monitoring their activities. That disagreement, says Sharon Allen, chairman of Deloitte's board and the sponsor of the survey, is one that companies need to address, particularly as these sites have become part of younger workers' lives. "It does, in fact, tee up the challenging debate or discussion that needs to take place to try to resolve both of their concerns," she said. Few businesses are having that conversation, according to the survey, though many executives indicated that it was on their minds. When asked what their company's policy was regarding social-networking use, roughly a quarter (26%) of employees said they knew of specific guidelines as to what they could and couldn't post. Similar numbers said their office didn't have a policy or they didn't know if their company had a policy - 23% and 24%, respectively.

Is it time for Web publishers and their users to have the privacy talk? At most Web sites, privacy policies are ridiculously long and convoluted scrolls of legalese that only a hearty privacy watchdog would read. For most users it remains a mystery just how publishers collect, use and share the data trails consumers leave behind while traversing a site. But publishers now are partnering more deeply with third party ad networks who plant their own cookies in their users' browsers and hit them again with ads out on their own networks with other publishers. How should a site broach the topic of privacy and ownership of data with its own customers? The industry-funded Future of Privacy Forum is hoping to get at this issue in a new research initiative that explores different ways sites can communicate with users about their online advertising experience and how a use's data trail is recorded and used. The study will try to find ways that publishers can raise user awareness about the use of online behavioral data and be more transparent about how it is harvested and shared.

Google never fails to surprise. It's the scope and scale of their ambitions that impresses me ranging as they do from relatively simple applications that are just way cool such as Sky Map, through their Chrome Web browser (which is now looking pretty stable), to the subject of this newsletter: Google Health. Google Health, which was launched as a beta (of course) in spring 2008, is a free repository for your personal health information. Using the service you can create online health profiles for yourself, family members or others you care for (these profiles can include health conditions, medications, allergies and lab results), you can import medical records from hospitals and pharmacies, share your health records with "your care network" (which may include family members, friends and doctors), and browse an online health services directory to find services that are integrated with Google Health. After you sign up you can import your medical records from Allscripts, Anvita Health, The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, The Cleveland Clinic, CVS Caremark, Healthgrades, Longs Drugs, Medco Health Solutions, Quest Diagnostics, RxAmerica and Walgreens. What you'll wind up with if you update all of the sections is a pretty complete health profile, which means that privacy has to be a concern. Interestingly, because becoming a subscriber is voluntary it appears that the service is exempt from the provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.